Monday, January 31, 2011

"Research firm Canalys revealed Monday that the 32.9 million handsets running a Google platform, which includes Android, OMS and Tapas, sold last quarter were enough to topple Nokia's Symbian, which had sales of 31 million, from the number one place, Reuters reports.

Google saw 615 percent growth year over year, compared to Nokia's 30 percent growth. Apple came in third with 16.2 million iPhones sold, giving it 16 percent of the global smartphone market. Research in Motion and Microsoft rounded out the list with 14 percent and 3 percent of the market respectively.

Though Nokia still maintains a sizable lead as the largest handset maker in the world, it has lost significant ground in the smartphone market in recent years. Former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo admitted last year that the Finnish handset maker had failed to make a splash in the U.S. smartphone market.

In September, Nokia went through a major management shakeup. The company first announced it would change CEOs, bringing in Microsoft executive Stephen Elop, in hopes of reenergizing the company's smartphone offerings. The company's smartphone chief announced his resignation several days later, then Nokia Chairman Jorma Ollila declared his intention to step down.

Nokia's flagship N8 smartphone saw numerous delays on its way to market. The company even went through a lost prototype debacle similar to the leak of an Apple iPhone 4 prototype that made headlines last year. Though sales of the N8 reportedly reached around 4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2010, the figures have been viewed as too little too late for Nokia.